Over tapas at the bar in a Spanish restaurant, we heard
two guitars beating out a fascinating fusion of rock, Latin harmonies,
salsa, and heavy metal with what felt like a dash of flamenco thrown
in for good measure. The couple making this striking music was Rodrigo
Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero, known simply as Rodrigo
y Gabriela. They left their native Mexico City with $1,000
and two guitars to try to make it in Ireland, where they imagined
that their unique musical style and what they referred to as the “unknown
factor” would build their success. They
didn’t know any English at the time, but now, after making it in
Ireland, and almost everywhere else in the world, their English
is full of charming Irish turns of phrase and their music is simply
addictive.
Barcelona The Great Enchantress is
an extended love letter to the vibrant, noisy, freedom-loving
European city that looks out over the azure Mediterranean and
is the most creatively exciting place we know. Written by noted
art-critic Robert Hughes, this small volume overflows with his
passion for Barcelona's art and architecture, subjects he generously
expands to include cultural history, food, and politics, as well
as sketches of his personal engagement with Barcelona's people
and the creative life-force of the city. Hughes writes, "You
are lucky if not too late in life, you discover a second city
other than your place of birth which becomes a true home town."
In his album Chavez Ravine,
Ry Cooder gathers great, if little known, musicians to present
a rich retrospective musical journey back to the Chicano culture
that flourished in 1940s and '50s Los Angeles. This masterwork
focuses on the Chavez Ravine community that was destroyed to
make way for the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers when they relocated to Los
Angeles in 1958. Chavez Ravine includes some of the most soulful
music you've ever heard, tunes that ably demonstrates how the
incomparable Ry Cooder can overhwelm you with musical pleasures
yet make you consider important, sometimes tragic, cultural issues
at the same time. Cooder
reintroduces us to an era and a place that were all but lost,
one where great and forgotten voices get to sing aloud again.
Annie Dillard's masterpiece For the Time Being is a book we have read numerous times, listened to on car trips, purchased in quantity for friends, and recommended to students as exemplifying extraordinary nonfiction writing about complex subjects. It opens with a meditation on birth defects and moves gracefully to include the seemingly unrelated stories of palentologist Teilhard de Chardin's exploration of the deserts of China, the natural history of sand, the teachings of the mystic Baal Shem Tov, and other esoteric bits of story, past and present, that become a cohesive and deeply intelligent examination of life, death, calamity, and the question, "Given things as they are, how shall one individual live?" For the Time Being is a daring work by a virtuoso at the peak of her powers.
Amid the dross, there is some
absolutely wonderful stuff on television these days, including Brotherhood,
renewed for another season, thank heaven; the late great series
we miss very much, The
Wire, and the now classic Deadwood. The three
seasons of Deadwood still get our vote as the best of
the best television available on DVD, a series in which the mad
genius that is David Milch hews something singular and extraordinary
out of the lawless American West. Some of our friends and colleagues
challenge our contention that it’s the most humane
series we know—what with the feeding of the recently deceased to
pigs and all. We insist they keep
watching, knowing that Deadwood will eventually get under their
skin in the very best sort of way.
Our daughter Megan is a physician's assistant specializing
in neurological surgery, and when the family book group makes
an exciting discovery, it tends to come from the literature
of medicine. Megan is most at home in an operating room, and
has organized medical missions to Ghana and Haiti, so she adds
her own behind-the-scenes stories to the discussion of books
like Dr. Atul Gawande'sBetterandComplications. Another favorite
is Pauline Chen’s Final
Exam. Pauline is a friend who writes as skillfully and with
as sure a hand as she practices surgery. Her narrative investigation
of death, and the fear of death that sometimes prevents doctors
from connecting meaningfully with their dying patients, is
elegant, insightful, and full of grace.